Through the run of one of the biggest cult hits in television history, William B. Davis put a new face on villainy, an institutional, eerily real incarnation of evil identified ominously by wafting smoke and the glow of a cigarette. A native Ontarian, Davis trained as an actor in esteemed company in the U.K. during the 1960s before returning to Canada to work as a theatrical director and drama teacher, eventually relocating to Hollywood North, Vancouver, BC. The 1980s saw him garnering small parts in inauspicious Canadian-shot television and movie projects, but he would establish a regular imprint in 1993 with a new science fiction series, "The X-Files" (Fox, 1993-2002). Davis played the shadowy, stoic intelligence operative predominantly known only by his credited billing, Cigarette Smoking Man. The show became a cultural phenomenon, with CSM ending up one of the most speculated-over villains in the buzz-happy realm of sci-fi fandom. It also made him a frequent guest star on a flurry of sci-fi and horror TV shows and movies through the 1990s and early 2000s. He would remain one of Canada's best-renowned thespian talents, both under the lights and behind them, yet be irrevocably identified as one of...

Through the run of one of the biggest cult hits in television history, William B. Davis put a new face on villainy, an institutional, eerily real incarnation of evil identified ominously by wafting smoke and the glow of a cigarette. A native Ontarian, Davis trained as an actor in esteemed company in the U.K. during the 1960s before returning to Canada to work as a theatrical director and drama teacher, eventually relocating to Hollywood North, Vancouver, BC. The 1980s saw him garnering small parts in inauspicious Canadian-shot television and movie projects, but he would establish a regular imprint in 1993 with a new science fiction series, "The X-Files" (Fox, 1993-2002). Davis played the shadowy, stoic intelligence operative predominantly known only by his credited billing, Cigarette Smoking Man. The show became a cultural phenomenon, with CSM ending up one of the most speculated-over villains in the buzz-happy realm of sci-fi fandom. It also made him a frequent guest star on a flurry of sci-fi and horror TV shows and movies through the 1990s and early 2000s. He would remain one of Canada's best-renowned thespian talents, both under the lights and behind them, yet be irrevocably identified as one of the creepiest personas in TV history, a gray-suited archetype of cold-blooded Machiavellianism.